Technical Field
The invention relates to a method for feeding items of laundry to a mangle or to some other laundry-treatment arrangement, wherein an item of laundry is gripped, said item of laundry is spread out at two adjacent corners of a front edge and deposited with said front edge on a feed conveyor which transports the item of laundry to the mangle or to some other laundry-treatment arrangement, and to a method for feeding items of laundry to a mangle or to some other laundry-treatment arrangement, wherein an item of laundry is gripped and said item of laundry is spread out at two adjacent corners of a front edge and transported with this front edge as the leading edge to the laundry-treatment arrangement.
Furthermore, the invention relates to an apparatus for feeding items of laundry to a mangle or some other laundry-treatment arrangement with a transport system having moveable clamps for holding a respective corner of an item of laundry, to an apparatus for feeding items of laundry to a laundry-treatment arrangement in which the transport system is assigned at least one pair of rollers for the passage of at least one part of an item of laundry and that the two rollers of the pair of rollers can rotate about parallel, upright axes of rotation, and to an apparatus for feeding items of laundry to a laundry-treatment arrangement in which the transport system is assigned at least one pair of rollers for the passage of at least one part of an item of laundry and that the two rollers of the pair of rollers can rotate about parallel axes of rotation that can be brought at least into a nearly upright position.
Prior Art
After being washed and dried, items of laundry are ironed in a mangle as so-called dry laundry, where they are freed of residual moisture or immediately folded in a folding device. The items of laundry must be fed to the mangle, folding device or some other laundry-treatment arrangement in a spread-out state. This is carried out mechanically by means of input machines. Said input machines are equipped with a feed conveyor, which feeds the spread-out item of laundry lying on it into the mangle or some other laundry-treatment arrangement.
The items of laundry are fed into the input machine individually, for example by being placed on the feed conveyor or hung on spreading clamps which spread out the item of laundry in front of the feed conveyor and deposit it on the latter. The hanging of the individual items of laundry on the clamps of the input machine as well as the direct placement of each individual item of laundry on the feed conveyor has been hitherto carried out manually. This is costly in terms of time and personnel. Attempts have been made to automate these activities. They have mostly failed due to the difficulty of automatically locating and gripping adjacent edges of a front edge of items of laundry in a reliable manner with a reasonable expenditure of mechanical investment.